Berry Street 125, and still caring

In its early years, Berry Street's mission involved "rescuing mothers of illegitimate children from further degradation". It was 1877, and infanticide was a tough social problem.

"In those days a woman who had children out of wedlock was considered to be a lesser human being," chief executive Sandie de Wolf said yesterday, leafing through an album of misty black-and-white photographs. Nurses, wearing starched caps, lined up like soldiers, with prams instead of guns.

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Berry Street, the welfare agency stung by a recent controversy involving children sniffing paint and glue on its premises, yesterday turned 125. It was a time for reflection.

Founded as The Victorian Infant Asylum, for its first 100 years Berry Street took in unwed mothers, foundlings and others society shunned. It also ran an adoption agency.

During the 1960s and 1970s the comfortable certainties exploded. The first wave of deinstitutionalisation came as "attachment theory" stressed the importance of babies bonding with a primary caregiver. The pill reduced unwanted pregnancies, while the single mothers' benefit gave women more options. Group homes were set up, foster care expanded and Berry Street closed its adoption services.

But the ideological shift was tough for some. "There was some sort of appeal to the public about institutions," Ms de Wolf said. "They could visit and see all the babies in the cots, make booties, that sort of thing. They felt they could make a contribution."

The problems now are more complex; more parents with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities, blended families, low-income ghettos and a sharp increase in drug use. And, of course, fluctuations in government funding.

The "chroming" scandal was a bad start to the agency's birthday year, Ms de Wolf said. The revelations of young people sniffing under staff supervision, claimed the scalp of then community services minister Christine Campbell and provoked a threat from Premier Steve Bracks to block annual funding unless the practice stopped.